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Sylvia (♦♦♦♦)

American poet
Sylvia Plath is studying in England. After a scathing review on one of her
published poems she goes to a party and meets British poet Edward Hughes. Thus
begins a tempestuous love affair that ends up in marriage. They move to America
when Hughes wins a poetry award, while Sylvia takes a teaching job. Then the
demands of family life start pressing on Sylvia for she suffers from jealousy
and writer’s block while he becomes a celebrated poet.

Fearing he
can’t write as well in the limelight, they go back to live in England but soon
he starts attracting female attention for his work while Sylvia takes care of
the children. A heated affair with an acquaintance of the couple leads Hughes
to leave Sylvia. By then it’s virtually impossible to coexist with Sylvia’s
fits.

Sylvia and
Hughes love each other madly. They understand each other at a very intimate
level, but they cannot live together. When Sylvia offers Hughes to come back
home and he refuses, she takes her own life.

Sylvia is by far the best performance I’ve
seen from Gwyneth Paltrow. She was brilliant in Proof, and very good in A
Perfect Murder, but Sylvia
plainly takes the cake for her acting abilities. In Sylvia, Gwyneth displays raw vulnerability, the haunting quality of
those who walk a fine line between genius and madness. She excels in that role.
Her on-screen chemistry with Daniel Craig is undeniable, so it’s like watching
a Greek tragedy unfold before your very eyes. I intuited what was going to
happen in the end, but watching it develop you feel that a woman like her,
drowning in those powerful emotions, wasn’t going to have a happy ending.

By the time I
saw Gwyneth in A Perfect Murder
opposite Michael Douglas and Viggo Mortensen, I knew she was capable of very
good acting and she was an actress to watch. Unfortunately, she has chosen a
more commercial path—which I don’t criticize per se because it has made her immensely
popular—with the Iron Man franchise.
She brings balance and etiquette to Iron
Man, but she should do serious work more often, work on the level of Sylvia and Proof.

Daniel Craig
was the icing on Sylvia’s cake. He
conveys strength in both his acting and his remarkable physical fitness so he
was excellent as co-protagonist. Daniel Craig is also an example of a fine
actor with a more commercial appeal, which I think it’s not necessarily bad,
but it’s difficult to make a crossover to more serious work once the public is
used to see you in certain roles.

In summary, Sylvia impressed me for both the topic
and the quality of its acting. I would like to read the poetry of both Plath
and Hughes to know the subjects a little better.

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